Custom-made lipid nanotubes as a tissue and hydrogel adhesive

Recently, nanomaterial-based adhesives have arised as alternatives to be used in the industrial field or to provide the next generation of biomedical adhesives with their enhanced mechanical properties and adhesion strengths. In this work, we developed a method for achieving adhesion between two PDMA (Poly dimethylacrylamide) hydrogel surfaces by using different nanomaterial-based adhesive dispersions with different sizes and shapes that have high mechanical adhesion strength. We obtained a new adhesive consisting of a lipid-based nanotube formed by the special custom-made molecule AQua (C25H29NO4) and measured the adhesion force between the hydrogel surfaces. Our results revealed that lipid AQua nanotube dispersions, which also has a high potential as drug delivery agents, showed efficient adhesion by strongly binding the hydrogel strips together and exhibit better adhesive effects in comparison with other nanomaterials that are used for this purpose. This high adhesion capability is also valid for various hydrogels that have different chemical properties or rigidities and soft tissues such as calf livers. So, the system developed here is believed to have a usage potential in different industrial and biomedical areas.